Warm Bodies Page 0,48

and fall flat on my back. Julie covers her mouth, but some laughter slips through.

'Hey, Cabernet!' Nora calls again. 'What's going on? Are you talking to somebody?'

'Hang on, okay? I'm just doing a tape journal.'

I stand up and dust myself off. I look up at Julie. Her brows are tight and she bites her lip. 'R . . .' she says miserably. 'You can't . . .'

The balcony door swings open and Nora appears, her curls just as thick and wild as they were in my visions, all those years ago. I've never seen her standing, and she's surprisingly tall, at least half a foot above Julie, long brown legs bare under a camouflage skirt. I had assumed she and Julie were classmates, but now I realise Nora is a few years older, maybe in her mid-twenties.

'What are you - ' she starts, then she sees me, and her eyebrows go up. 'Oh my holy Lord. Is that him?'

Julie sighs. 'Nora, this is R. R . . . Nora.'

Nora stares at me like I'm Sasquatch, the Yeti, maybe a unicorn. 'Um . . . nice to meet you . . . R.'

'Likewise,' I reply, and Nora slaps a hand over her mouth to stifle a delighted squeak, looks at Julie, then back at me.

'What should we do?' Julie asks Nora, trying to ignore her giddiness. 'He just showed up. I'm trying to tell him he's going to get killed.'

'Well, he needs to get up here, first of all,' Nora says, still staring at me.

'Into the house? Are you stupid?'

'Come on, your dad's not back for another two days. Safer for him in the house than on the street.'

Julie thinks for a minute. 'Okay. Hold on, R, I'll come down.'

I go around to the front of the house and stand at the door, waiting nervously in my dress shirt and tie. She opens it, grinning shyly. Prom night at the end of the world.

'Hi, Julie,' I say, as if none of the previous conversation happened.

She hesitates, then steps forward and hugs me. 'I actually missed you,' she says into my shirt.

'I . . . heard that.'

She pulls back to look at me, and something wild glints in her eyes. 'Hey, R,' she says. 'If I kissed you, would I get . . . you know . . . converted?'

My thoughts skip like a record in an earthquake. As far as I know, only a bite, a violent transfer of blood and essences, has the power to make the Living join the Dead before actually dying. To expedite the inevitable. But then again, I'm fairly sure Julie's question has never, ever been asked before.

'Don't . . . think so,' I say, 'but - '

A spotlight flashes at the end of the street. The sound of two guards barking commands breaks the night quiet.

'Shit, the patrol,' Julie whispers, and yanks me inside the house. 'We should get the lights out, it's after curfew. Come on.'

She runs up the stairs and I follow her, relief and disappointment mixing in my chest like unstable chemicals.

Julie's home feels eerily unoccupied. In the kitchen, the den, the short halls and steep staircases, the walls are white and unadorned. The few pieces of furniture are plastic, and rows of fluorescent lights glare down on stainproof beige carpets. It feels like the vacated office of a bankrupt company, empty echoing rooms and the lingering scent of desperation.

Julie turns lights off as she goes, darkening the house until we reach her bedroom. She switches off the overhead bulb and flicks on a Tiffany lamp by her bed. I step inside and turn in slow circles, greedily absorbing Julie's private world.

If her mind were a room, it would look like this.

Each wall is a different colour. One red, one white, one yellow, one black, and a sky-blue ceiling strung with toy airplanes. Each wall seems designated for a theme. The red is nearly covered with movie ticket stubs and concert posters, all browned and faded with age. The white is crowded with paintings, starting near the floor with a row of amateur acrylics and leading up to three stunning oil canvases: a sleeping girl about to be devoured by tigers, a nightmarish Christ on a geometric cross, and a surreal landscape draped with melting clocks.

'Recognise those?' Julie says with a grin she can barely contain. 'Salvador Dali. Originals, of course.'

Nora comes in from the balcony, sees me with my face inches from the canvases, and laughs. 'Nice decor, right? Me and